At any rate, after one of my early columns had curtsied and left the stage, an indignant letter to the editor appeared, written by, as I recall, a gent named Terry Lawhead. It ran thus, and after all these years I believe I can still quote it verbatim. “Editor, Doug Wilson is a complete idiot. Terry Lawhead, Moscow.” My dear wife read this penetrating analysis before I got home, and of course this kind of thing was a complete novelty … our very first encounter with liberal tolerance. She said reading that was like getting punched in the stomach. When I got home, we talked it through and adopted the official demeanor toward hostile criticism that we have sought to maintain in our home ever since that time. I suggested that Nancy reply with her own letter to the editor. It should run, “Editor, Terry Lawhead doesn’t know the half of it. Nancy Wilson, Moscow.” She thought that might come across a tad disrespectful, but she did clip out Terry’s letter for a place of honor on our fridge.But this does create another problem. Does not a breezy and cavalier dismissal of criticism like this create a macho mentality that considers itself above correction no matter what? And who wants to be that guy? We all need correction, and we all should be open to the kind that would help us — even if it is from people who don’t know us, or even from people who are hostile.
The key here, for anybody in the midst of the fray, is to have family and friends who have open access to you, and who have the liberty to say that a particular criticism strikes them as valid, or to offer criticisms of their own. It might be an editor, it could be a friend, it might be your elders, it could be your wife or kids — or if you are a blessed writer, it could be all of them. If you are blessed with this kind of vertebrate companionship, you know that their views are not being driven by the fear of man — what a death trap that is! They will tell you when they believe you should grant a particular point, and you can trust them. You know how open to correction they are in face-to-face life, and they know how open to it you are. You know their commitment to principle, and they know yours. If a critic is right, they will tell you, and you should say so. If he isn’t, be deaf to expediency.
May there be many a day spent reading in front of a fireplace this winter for our Australian and New Zealand bookshelf lovers.
In case you missed it, learn all about Rene Belbenoit, prison escape artist, butterfly enthusiast, and storyteller. A recently cataloged manuscript of his autobiography tells the story of of this “incorrigible” Frenchman through his own words and illustrations.
Now, remember that according to [Richard] Dawkins the story is told so that we should admire not Thomas, but the other disciples, “whose faith was so strong that they did not need evidence.” What is wrong with that? Well, first of all, the other disciples believed in the resurrection not through blind faith, but because they saw the risen Jesus with their own eyes.
Dawkins is right that we are not supposed to admire Thomas’s refusal to believe, but he is wrong about the reason. Thomas’s behaviour really is a little irrational. What better basis for belief could he have had than the testimony of his most trusted friends? We all have to rely on testimony rather than first-hand experience for the vast majority of our knowledge.
Thomas’s sin was the refusal to believe reliable testimony. The English natural philosopher and theologian John Wilkins wrote about the Doubting Thomas story in the seventeenth century. Jesus’s saying ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe’ signified, for Wilkins, that it was ‘a more excellent, commendable and blessed thing for a man to yield his assent, upon such evidence as is in itself sufficient, without insisting upon more.’ The testimony of the other disciples should have been in itself sufficient for Thomas; and yet he insisted upon more.
The kind of people adult, white, middle-class, liberal-artsy types hate the most are other adult, white, middle-class, liberal-artsy types. And that is what animates Slate, that annoyance. It’s partially self hatred and partially the hatred of those who resemble you in many ways but who, in your own mind, fall far short of your own standards. I’m not suggesting that that’s a ridiculous attitude; we all feel some version of these feelings, and unless you’re of the opinion that all people are equal in temperament and character, they can be rational. But I am saying that satisfying this desire, to grind away the resentment of the digitally-inclined creative (or “creative”) bourgeois, is the real ethos of Slate. The contrarianism is a means, not an end; cheesing off other AWMCLATs will often involve defying the conventional wisdom in a kind of showy way.
Alexander Graham Bell’s tetrahedral tower is unveiled in 1907 in Nova Scotia.
Photograph courtesy the Bell Collection
We promote freedom of speech and expression precisely so that we can openly disagree about what our culture should be and should value. We vote by admitting certain works to our memory and insisting that our friends also read, listen to, or look at it. Works that are beloved by many have a proportionate effect on the culture; works that are loved by fewer, but with greater intensity, may have an equal or greater effect. It is impossible to measure.A work may indeed be dangerous, but the counter is not often to censor it, it is to offer an alternative. Yet puritans of one stripe or another invariably insist on censorship. Just as the Puritans of Political Correctness ban any speech by their opponents on most American university campuses merely because they do not agree with them, so also the Puritans of anti-violence would ban videogames merely because they do not enjoy them.
In fact we have actual data about the effects of videogames; even the most harmful are relatively harmless, in terms of any direct cause and effect on real-world violence. Pornography, on the other hand, has been proven to be a rehearsal for real-world acting-out of the scripts thus depicted. Yet the very people who would ban videogames are often the ones most insistent on protecting the freedom of pornographers. Research makes no difference to them; actual facts rarely influence people’s visceral decisions.
My problem is that I understand the arguments for and against censorship. There are things that I believe damage society — pornography among them — but I’m not absolutely sure that I’m right, or that a ban, if once instituted, would be limited to what I would call “pornography.” Once we admit censorship, the definition of the thing censored will always be expanded to include unintended objects.